Dresdenverse: Sanctuary

Session 12

Brothers, Wives, and Night Animal Control

9

JUL/15

The party heads back to the estate after learning the eye(the key to the vault) went missing during the battle. Upon arriving, they find Wellington tied to the gate, beaten and missing an arm. Onlookers across the estate look in horror as ambulance arrive with police right behind them.

The EMT’s try to put Wellington in the ambulance but Henry pulls a gun on them. Wellington immediately regains consciousness after being pulled within the grounds as police drive up and aim their guns on Henry.

With Wellington now able to recover, Henry aggressively reasons with them and peacefully goes with the officers. Wellington is able to tell Henry that it was Gilgamesh who attacked the vault. Leslie Vastolo and Luis Mirabal show up and assure the officers that they will take care of anything else needed at the estate.

Evan and Dante head down into the vault. After avoiding many dead corpses of ghouls, they find the vault wide open with the eye still in the statue. They find many files missing belonging to the Paranet, many items of power missing, and the main pedestal gone. After realizing the shells for the hatched eggs have been tampered with, they go in search of some hatched dragons.

Henry is about be interrogated by a couple of suits when someone knocks on the interrogation room door. The officers meet someone outside the door and, after a moment, Russell Carson walks in and sits across from Henry. He reveals that it was Henry’s mother who Joined with a young Alistair Crowley and gave birth to Carson and that Carson escaped while they tore Henry out of their mother’s womb, near feet from their now dead father. Carson offers Henry to join him, brothers side-by-side, grabbing their birthright and not being a slave to Baltimore’s supernatural monsters. Henry laughs in his face.

Carson leaves just after magically disintegrating Henry’s cuffs. The door is left open and, after no one hears Henry’s calls, Henry exits his room to find every single person, cop, criminal, and civilian dead within the police stations walls. Checking the police stations tapes, Henry tracks Carson coming into the station and then something like green eyes appears on his face then the camera stops recording. This happens every time a Carson appears on a new camera. Henry leaves the station to see a very recognizable gyrocopter headed east.

Evan and Dante land the gyrocopter next to an apartment complex in the East Green. Evan says his tracking spell on the supposed dragons are upstairs.

The pair head into the building and knock on a door. Someone behind the door asks what they want. They claim they are from animal control and that there are reports of wild birds in his apartment. The resident, Greg Johnson, says that there are no wild birds, he didn’t call for animal control, and asks why they are working so late. Evan says they are night animal control.

Henry arrives to distantly view the pair as the super attendant shows up and asks for a work order. Evan says he forgot it in the gyrocop… er, the van. The super asks for ID. The pair ask the super to be a bro. The super, eager to get back to his bottle of Jack, convince Greg to let them in for a quick check. They enter with Henry who is introduced as their co-worker. Greg says they can check everywhere but the children’s room. Evan heads immediately to the children’s room. His tracking spell indicates that the three sleeping children are the dragons or that the children are possibly “smuggling” the dragons in or on their persons.

Henry finally levels with Greg and tells him that the vault has been compromised and that the children/dragons are in danger. Greg feigns ignorance until Henry tells him that the head guy from “night animal control” is Evan Montrose. Greg asks why Evan didn’t just say that when he arrived. No one from the party really has an answer.

The party arrive at Evan’s apartment. It’s a literal castle on top of a high condominium on a peninsula on the east end of the waterfront. Evan introduces the party to his wife, Lorna, who is staying here with her 2 children. Evan tells the woman whom he married, got a green card for, brought her over to the States to live in his “apartment”, and has neither mentioned nor visited the entire time he has been back in Baltimore, that he is letting a man and his 2 nephews and niece stay at the castle. She says ok and they make love for at least 42 minutes, kind of.

Henry heads back to the vault and talks to the ghost of Fortunato. It’s revealed that Gilgamesh did take out Wellington but then Carson showed up and took a lot of files and all of the Winter Court’s items. Carson also tampered with all the special items and most importantly took the main pedestal out outright. Fortunato believes this hints at a more deeper scheme since the only person who could use such a pedestal would be one of the Fae Queens. So either one of the Queens is working with Carson or it might hold ill tidings for Evelyn’s immediate future.

Henry heads back to the apartment and asks Evan to track Carson using Henry’s blood, since they’re brothers. The party tracks Carson to the Dupin Society where Juan Vastolo is sitting on the porch reception desk. He seems to be in a daze so Henry slaps him, inadvertently sensing that Juan had been recently mind controlled. Juan remembers that Carson left a note for the party and as they look for it, Juan stabs Henry. Evan has just enough time to break Carson’s mind control when the party are bombarded with bullet fire coming from inside the building. Dante kills one person before Evan can break the rest of the mind controlled society members from Carson’s spell.

Henry leads the party down to the archive where a portal is seen closing with Carson, Paul Mackey, and a very large figure on the other side. The archive’s ghostly sentries are uncharacteristically standing by where the portal closed. The sentries make absolutely no movement until Evan tries to open a portal to follow Carson. Evan is attacked, Dante realizes his bullets don’t affect ghosts, and Henry calls upon stalwart conviction and swiftly banishes the ghosts away.

Evan finally opens the portal to find a dying Paul. He says that Carson took the statue of the Autumn Queen. Carson just needs to wait until this Sunday and he will have everything he needs to control the vault. Paul curses Evan for killing Susan, their candidate for the Autumn Queen. He also says that if Old Man Montrose would have just laid low and not have been a martyr for Baltimore, both Spring and Autumn would be on their way to their mantle of power. Evan tells him to stop complaining.

Paul gives Henry a book on the rituals of Autumn and Spring which Carson will be using to take over the vault. The party heads back to Baltimore. Paul dies. The party finds no society members and realize the clocks are all wrong. They exit to find a newspaper on the front porch. Today is Sunday!